Vatutinki
55°29'42"N 37°19'43"E

The GRU Space Intelligence Directorate manages the Russian space reconnaissance program in coordination with the Fleet Intelligence Direction of the Fifth Directorate. The Fleet Intelligence Direction is responsible for space systems that provide intelligence supporting naval forces. The Space Intelligence Directorate is responsible for the development, manufacture, launch, and operation of Russian space-based reconnaissance systems. The directorate is located at Vatutinki, 50 kilometers southwest of Moscow. It operates its own cosmodromes, several research institutes, supporting mission ground centers, and a centralized computer processing facility.

The Troitsk town was founded in the 1950s as an Academic City, consisting of a number of scientific-research institutes dealing primarily with basic research in physics. [The "other" Troitsk is the smallest of a series of industrial cities on the east side of the Ural Mountains, the others being the better known Magnitogorsk and Chelyabinsk].